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European Commission endorses DVB-H standard
The European Commission has backed DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds) as the preferred standard for digital TV signals to be broadcast to mobile phones across Europe.
The Commission has called on member states to roll out services using the standard as quickly as possible. Its recommendation could be upgraded to an official mandate as soon as 2008.
The European Commission decided to take the lead in the standards debate, rather than leave the decision to market forces, in order to make sure Europe remains competitive.
The mobile TV market could be worth £13.5bn by 2011 and the Commission wants European to quickly develop as a market leader rather than adopt a wait-and-see approach and possibly lose market share to other regions.
Europe invested £27m in the research and development of DVB-H which has so far been trialled or rolled out in eighteen European countries.
There are currently seven standards for mobile TV - DVB-H, S-DMB (Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcast), STIMI (Satellite Terrestial Interactive Multiservice Infrastructure), MediaFLO, ISDB-T (Integrated Service Digital Broadcasting), T-DMB (Terrestial Digital Mulitmedia Broadcast) and DAB-IP (Digital Audio Broadcast). Of these, DVB-H is considered to be the most open standard.
The adoption of DVB-H could be a problem in the UK because is necessitates freeing up some of the radio spectrum.
The UHF band (470-862MHz), which is the optimum spectrum for multimedia mobile services, will probably not be freed up in the UK until digital switch-over is completed in 2012.
Ofcom, the UK industry regulator, has said that some of the spectrum will be available in late 2008 or early 2009.
Major industry players such as O2, have called for a level-playing field across Europe with spectrum available uniformly and preferably at the same time.
Other companies such as BSkyB have criticised the European Commission for recommending a standard rather than leaving the industry to choose a technology based on commercial need.
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